Movie notes: “Young @ Heart” a must-see

In a documentary filled with memorable moments  most hilarious, some heartbreaking  one scene still stands out from “Young @ Heart,” which chronicles seven weeks in the life of a chorus of 70-, 80- and 90-year-olds (who sing everything from James Brown to the Clash to Sonic Youth) as they try gamely to learn a bunch of new tunes for their next concert.

By all accounts, Fred Knittle is lucky to be alive. A former member of the chorus, he had to drop out because of congestive heart failure. As he explains (without an ounce of self-pity), he has fluid in his lungs and just about everywhere else. His ankles are as thick as legs, and his waist is bloated to clownlike proportions. He’s already outlived his doctor’s prognosis. His return to the chorus for a special one-night only concert in their home base of Northampton, Mass., is a one-shot deal, since he’s way too ill to travel.

And yet, there he is, center stage, oxygen tank at his side, preparing to sing Coldplay’s “Fix You” by himself. It was supposed to be a duet with another former member, Bob Salvini. As sick as Knittle is, he’s the one who made it; his duet partner was not as fortunate. So, after an intro/dedication by choir director Bob Cilman, Knittle takes his place in a folding chair in front of a single microphone. In the silence before the song begins, all you hear is the click/whoosh of his oxygen tank, which functions as a sort of metronome.

In a remarkable, rumbling baritone that’s equal parts Tennessee Ernie Ford and Johnny Cash, he turns the falsetto original version, which speaks of love and loss, into a meditation on loss. Period. “Lights will guide you home/And ignite your bones/And I will try … to fix you.” Then the chorus comes in behind him.

If you can sit through this in the theater without getting goosebumps or a tad teary-eyed, you may actually be flat-lining. Call 911 immediately. I got choked up again watching the clip on YouTube, which doesn’t begin to do it justice

Though the chorus certainly gives the EMS plenty of business (since the movie was filmed in 2006, I was relieved to discover after a Google search that Knittle is still with us as of April), there are far more funny moments than sad ones as they stumble through the new songs. Tunes that offer rhythmic or lyrical challenges  respectively, Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good)” and Allen Toussaint’s tongue-twisting “Yes We Can Can,” which became the Pointer Sisters’ first hit in 1973  prove so daunting, Cilman almost gives up on both. But they provide a running gag and a bit of tension-building, as we wonder: Can they pull them off after seven weeks of screwing them up?

Almost as good is the scene in which they sing Dylan’s “Forever Young” in a men’s prison an hour after getting some sad news. And setting up the Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere” and the Ramones “I Wanna Be Sedated” as music videos is a hoot. The former looks like they borrowed the locations for “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”; the latter looks like a rock ‘n’ roll nursing home.

In the audience (in addition to a smattering of gray and not-so-gray heads) was a three-generation posse that included my wife, daughter and my sudoku-loving, V6-driving, pistol-packin’, large-dog-wrangling 86-year-old mother-in-law, who many years ago took her two daughters to see the Beatles in Dallas. I was worried that the film’s sad moments might overshadow everything else, but she seemed to take it in stride. Most of her peers are long gone, so she’s had plenty of experience in dealing with this.

I did notice after the film that she had made some new friends  two gray-haired ladies with whom she was comparing notes. One had a tube in her nose; as I walked behind her, I heard the familiar click/whoosh of an oxygen tank.